MIT Innovation Blog

MIT Innovation Initiative and EIC at Politecnico di Torino launch the SEMI Project

  • MIT Innovation Initiative
  • EIC at Politecnico di Torino

New joint research project will explore student interests and activities in entrepreneurship, making and innovation at technical universities.

The Student Entrepreneurship Making Innovation (SEMI) is a research project designed to explore student interests and activities in entrepreneurship, making and innovation created by the MIT Innovation Initiative and the Entrepreneurship and Innovation Center (EIC) at Politecnico di Torino (PoliTO). The main goal of the SEMI project is to understand the aspirations, goals and skills that students at technical universities have in these important areas and to use the information to explore how to improve education and support in these domains.

Several studies (e.g Souitaris et al., 2007; Rasmussen & Sørheim, 2006) show that it is important to increase the innovation culture inside technical universities in order to create a place where students gain the knowledge base to contribute to the innovation economy.

The study is designed to provide a replicable survey instrument that can be used at universities around the world to measure and analyze the innovation and entrepreneurship culture.

The expected impact is three-fold.

  • First, it will allow us to better understand the goals and aspirations of the new generation of global innovators;
  • Second, it will provide insights that will allow us to train better young entrepreneurs, innovators and makers;
  • Third, it will help technical universities improve their education and support in entrepreneurship, making and innovation.

In the following months, there will be several presentations of this research project and the survey will be piloted with a plan for a full launch in 2019. The first results of the project will be presented in the summer of next year.

Professor Fiona Murray and PhD student Michael Kearney are members of the MIT Innovation Initiative team. Professor Emilio Paolucci and PhD student Giuliano Sansone are members of the PoliTO team. Thanks to this project in 2018, Sansone did a visiting period abroad at MIT under the supervision of Professor Murray.